THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION
OF THE NORTH COAST
OF CALIFORNIA

BY

S. F. COOK

ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORDS
Vol. 16, No. 3

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORDS

Editors (Berkeley): R. L. Olson, R. F. Heizer, T. D. McCown, J. H. Rowe
Volume 16. No. 3. pp. 81-130

Submitted by editors April 21, 1955
Issued October 18, 1956
Price, 75 cents

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles
California

Cambridge University Press
London, England

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF THE NORTH COAST OF CALIFORNIA

BY

S. F. COOK

INTRODUCTION

The present manuscript attempts a reassessment of the aboriginal population of Northwestern California, from the Oregon line to the Bay of San Francisco. There are no natural and fixed limits to the territory. Its outline serves merely the purposes of convenience. For this reason the individual units within the whole area are based, not upon natural ecological provinces such as mountain ranges, valleys, or river basins, but upon ethnic or "tribal" boundaries. Moreover, since there is no necessary interrelationship between the component parts, each is considered as a separate entity, and its population is computed separately. There is no final grand total to be added up, the significance of which transcends that of any of the constituents.

Since the objective here is the calculation of pure numbers, it is irrelevant that the natural habitat, the mode of life, the reactions to environment of the various tribes and linguistic stocks vary enormously. Such a disregard for the basic principles of ethnography and human ecology will be tolerated only because the limitations of space and time demand that the fundamental question "What was the population?" be answered before opening up the problem of why the population was no greater or no less. We must know how many people there were before we can study their equilibrium with the physical or cultural environment.

The outcome of this study is to augment markedly the previously estimated number of inhabitants in the region at hand, and, by implication, the number in the whole state. The magnitude of the aboriginal population has steadily diminished in our eyes for many years. I believe it was Powers who thought that the natives numbered as high as 750,000 or more. Merriam thought there were 260,000. Kroeber, in the Handbook of California Indians, (1925, p. 882) reduced it to 133,000. I myself in an earlier work (1943, pp. 161 et seq.) reviewed the evidence and raised Kroeber's figure by no more than 10 per cent. It appears to me that the trend toward assessing the native population in continually diminishing terms is due to the operation of two factors.

The first is a tendency on the part of subsequent generations to adopt a highly skeptical attitude toward all statements and testimony derived from earlier generations. Inherent in this point of view is the feeling, consciously expressed or unconsciously followed, that all human beings contemporary with an event either lie deliberately or exaggerate without compunction. This failing, so the argument runs, becomes most apparent when any numerical estimates are involved. Thus the soldier inevitably grossly magnifies the force of the enemy, the priest inflates the number of his flock, the farmer falsifies the size of his herds, the woodsman increases the height of the tree—all just as the fisherman enlarges upon the big one which got away. That these individuals are frequently subject to an urge to exaggerate cannot for a moment be denied. Nevertheless, under many circumstances most men lack a desire to do so or, if they feel such desire, know how to curb it.

To maintain explicitly or by implication that every observer without exception who reported on the size of Indian villages or the numbers of Indians seen was guilty of inflating the values is no more justifiable than to accuse every man who makes a tax return of having cheated the government. Under our law each person is innocent until proved guilty. Similarly, within the range of his intellect and the scope of his senses a traveler or a settler or a miner or a soldier of one hundred years ago should be credited with telling the truth unless there is clear evidence from outside sources that he is prevaricating. Evidence of falsehood should be looked for and, if found, the account should be discounted or discredited. Otherwise it should be admitted at face value. It need not be stressed, of course, that the acceptance or the rejection of a given datum because it does or does not conform to a preconceived theory constitutes a major scientific crime.

In the assessment of the California population it may have come about through the years that the disinclination to agree with contemporary observation has been carried too far and that a more liberal attitude of mind is needed. If so, then the reduction of the population which has taken place in print may have overshot its mark and the figures may require revision upwards.

The second factor is methodological. Throughout the last half-century, and beginning with the pioneer work of Barrett and Kroeber, ethnographers have employed the informant method almost exclusively. It is not my intention to deprecate this procedure in any way or to imply that it has not proved an exceedingly valuable tool. I would like to suggest, however that it does carry certain limitations. I refer specifically to the inability of old men and women to remember and transmit quantitative facts over a great span of years. On the other hand, qualitative facts and ideas can persist in the mind with little or no blurring or alteration. Thus a man might retain clearly from his own memory, or through that of his parents, where a village was located, what its name was, and some of the people who lived there. Yet he might have no clear concept whatever how many persons inhabited the village or how many villages were known to the tribe. This failure to retain and transmit accurate knowledge of number or mensuration becomes intensified if the informant is required to reach across an intervening period of unrest and confusion, both physical and mental, to an era of stability long since vanished. Yet this is just what the informant is asked to do when he tries to tell about the geographic and demographic conditions existing one or more generations prior to his own youth.

I do not wish to advocate throwing out all informant testimony for these reasons—or, indeed, any of it. I merely wish to suggest that an undeviating adherence to literal statements of informants may on occasion lead to population estimates which are too low. The same discretion and criticism should be accorded them as in the other direction should be accorded to the statements left by contemporary white observers.

THE YUROK

The first exhaustive and scholarly attempt to assess aboriginal population was that of A. L. Kroeber (1925) in his Handbook of the Indians of California. He made a particularly careful study of and worked out his fundamental principles with the Yurok. Hence any reappraisement of the population problem in Northwest California must begin with a thorough examination of all the evidence pertaining to this tribe.

Three primary avenues of approach are possible: ecological, ethnographic, and archaeological. It is proposed to deal here with the second, or ethnographic material. The principal sources are three in number; the pertinent chapter in the Handbook, the extensive monograph by Waterman (1920) and the village lists of Merriam (see Bibliography). All these investigators inspected the terrain and interviewed many informants during the decade 1900-1910. Hence their data have now become definitive.

For calculating population from village data it is necessary to know the number of houses per village and the number of inhabitants per house. Both these variables depend for their value upon numerous demographic and cultural factors and hence must be determined separately for nearly every tribe studied. Kroeber has paid special attention to the second variable, the number of inhabitants per house, and has concluded that the best value for the Yurok is 7.5 persons. Since all the contemporary accounts agree with this conclusion it may be accepted as established.

With regard to the number of houses per village it must be admitted that this factor is subject to wide variation both in locality and